Teachers versus children? Summer camps are a right
Where is the line drawn between rights? Between the legitimate and shared right of teachers to demand decent working conditions and the right of children to fully enjoy their educational process, including outside the classroom? When these two rights conflict, the answer cannot be that one is left hanging. Children's rights are non-negotiable, nor can they be used as leverage in a conflict they did not create and over which they have no power.
The social organizations that work with children and adolescents at risk of or experiencing social exclusion express our deep concern regarding the announcement by some schools that they are suspending field trips and summer camps as a form of protest. We understand the teachers' frustration and share the need for profound structural improvements to the public education system, a fundamental pillar of the welfare state and a key tool for equal opportunities. However, we believe this approach is a serious mistake, because it shifts the burden of the conflict onto those who bear no responsibility: children and adolescents.
School trips and summer camps are not a luxury or an afterthought: they are education and inclusion. They are an integral part of schools' educational projects and contribute significantly to students' emotional, social, and community development. They foster personal autonomy, strengthen peer bonds, generate experiential learning that cannot be replicated in the classroom, and complement the academic curriculum. For many children, especially those living in vulnerable circumstances, these activities are the only opportunity to leave their immediate surroundings, experience other realities, and access cultural, natural, and social experiences that they would rarely encounter otherwise.
If we accept that education is a fundamental right, we cannot fragment it as it suits us. Suspending field trips and summer camps as a pressure tactic is equivalent, in pedagogical terms, to deciding that math or language classes will not be taught in a given year to protest high class sizes, or that reading instruction will be discontinued due to a lack of resources. No one considers it acceptable to suspend a subject as a means of protest. Why, then, can we suspend education in leisure activities, social interaction, and experiential learning? This perspective reduces education to what happens in the classroom and obscures essential dimensions of children's development.
Children's rights organizations maintain that children's rights cannot be used as bargaining chips in labor negotiations. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child establishes that the best interests of children must be a primary consideration in all decisions that affect them. When a pressure tactic directly impacts their well-being, development, and educational opportunities, it is necessary to reconsider it with collective responsibility.
Furthermore, this decision has consequences not only for students. It also affects the network of leisure-based education organizations, summer camps, counselors, and a sector that is an integral part of the Catalan educational ecosystem. Weakening this network means weakening a system that, precisely, should be strengthened to guarantee a comprehensive, equitable, and high-quality education.
Therefore, we demand answers to the teachers' justified demands, but we also call for finding ways to mobilize that challenge the administration without harming the children. The conflict is with the Department of Education, not with the students. Labor demands are legitimate and necessary; children's rights are inalienable. Conflicts between adults should not fall on those with the least voice and the least capacity to defend themselves.
Defending public education also means defending it in its entirety: inside and outside the classroom. We won't build a better school by reducing educational spaces or limiting experiences that foster connections, a sense of community, and meaningful learning. If we want transformative education, we can't start by cutting back on what helps generate change. Childhood cannot be the front line. It must always be the focus.
